Plato on the Limits of Human Life

Sara Brill

Description

Implicating the soul in the political health of the polis

By focusing on the immortal character of the soul in key Platonic dialogues, Sara Brill shows how Plato thought of the soul as remarkably flexible, complex, and indicative of the inner workings of political life and institutions. As she explores the character of the soul, Brill reveals the corrective function that law and myth serve. If the soul is limitless, she claims, then the city must serve a regulatory or prosthetic function and prop up good political institutions against the threat of the soul's excess. Brill's sensitivity to dramatic elements and discursive strategies in Plato's dialogues illuminates the intimate connection between city and soul.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Phaedo
1 Socratic Prothumia
2 The Body-like Soul
3 Psychic Geography
Part II. Republic
4 City and Soul
5 Psychic Fragmentation
6 Philosophy in the City
7 Politics and Immortality
Part III. Laws
8 Psychology for Legislators
9 Psychology for the Legislated
10 Psychic Excess
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie de la psychologie
• Movements
• Moral Philosophy
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Phenomenology
• Continental philosophy
• Ethics
• Plato
• Social

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 03 juin 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253008916
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
John Sallis, Editor
Consulting Editors
Robert Bernasconi
Rudolph Bernet
John D. Caputo
David Carr
Edward S. Casey
Hubert Dreyfus
Don Ihde
David Farrell Krell
Lenore Langsdorf
Alphonso Lingis
William L. McBride
J. N. Mohanty
Mary Rawlinson
Tom Rockmore
Calvin O. Schrag
Reiner Schürmann
Charles E. Scott
Thomas Sheehan
Robert Sokolowski
Bruce W. Wilshire
David Wood
PLATO ON THE LIMITS OF HUMAN LIFE
Sara Brill
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
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© 2013 by Sara Brill
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brill, Sara.
Plato on the limits of human life / Sara Brill.
pages cm — (Studies in Continental thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00882-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00887-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00891-6 (ebook) 1. Plato. 2. Soul. I. Title.
B398.S7B75 2013
128’.1092—dc23
2013000401
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
 
 
To Ryan, who calls it as he sees it
 
“The soul doesn't die,” he said. “She becomes a stranger.”
 
 
 
—Andrey Platonov
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Phaedo
1 Socratic Prothumia
2 The Body-like Soul
3 Psychic Geography
Part II. Republic
4 City and Soul
5 Psychic Fragmentation
6 Philosophy in the City
7 Politics and Immortality
Part III. Laws
8 Psychology for Legislators
9 Psychology for the Legislated
10 Psychic Excess
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
I AM INDEBTED TO my parents, Pam and Bob, and brother Rob, for creating an environment in which eccentricities are warmly accepted, supported, and treated as sources of amusement. I would also like to acknowledge my wonderful colleagues in Fairfield University's Philosophy Department for providing a welcoming and friendly environment in which to work; I am grateful to the university for granting me a pre-tenure leave in 2006–7, during which time I drafted several chapters of this book. Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press has been a model of professionalism and expertise and a delight to work with.
I have had the great fortune of studying with several scholars who understand the act of thinking to be an expression of joy—Charles Solomon, Larry Kimmel, Judith Norman, and especially John Sallis—and I am profoundly grateful to those friends and colleagues whose conversation and companionship have shaped these ideas in more ways than I can say. I would like to acknowledge in particular Ryan Drake, whose humor and acumen make all things better, as well as Jocelyn Boryczka, Jill Gordon, Chris Long, Marina McCoy, and Hasana Sharp.
The ideas for this book have been vetted in a number of professional conferences and speaking engagements, and I would like to thank the philosophy faculty and students at Boston College, Colby College, Trinity College, University of Kentucky, and Baylor University, as well as the members of the Ancient Philosophy Society, whose annual conferences create a rich environment for the sharing of ideas and an intellectual home. It has been my great honor to receive the benefit of the time and attention of a number of people who have read and commented upon portions of this manuscript and given invaluable feedback. In addition to those already mentioned, I would like to thank Claudia Baracchi, Emanuela Bianchi, Walter Brogan, Sarah Glenn, Francisco Gonzalez, Benjamin Grazzini, Gary Gurtler, Drew Hyland, Brooke Holmes, Sean Kirkland, Robert Metcalf, Mitchell Miller, Holly Moore, Mark Munn, Michael Naas, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou, Gregory Recco, Eric Sanday, Michael Shaw, Anne-Marie Schulz, Christina Tarnopolsky, Lew Trewlany-Cassity, and Adriel Trott.
Portions of a few of the chapters in this book first appeared as journal articles, and I thank these journals for permission to reprint this scholarship: an early version of chapter 3 ’s arguments about the myth in the Phaedo first appeared in “The Geography of Finitude: Myth and Earth in Plato's Phaedo,” International Philosophical Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2009): 5–23; the “Immortality” section of chapter 7 first appeared in “Alive and Sleepless: The Politics of Immortality in Republic X,” Polis 24, no. 2 (2007): 231–61; and portions of chapters 9 and 10 first appeared in “Psychology and Legislation in Plato's Laws,” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 26 (2010): 211–42. Research for portions of part 2 (on the Republic ) was undertaken while enjoying the hospitality of the Albert Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, Germany, made possible by a Fulbright grant and the sponsorship of Dr. Günter Figal.
Introduction
N EAR THE END of Alcibiades I , Socrates proposes an image for attaining the knowledge of soul that he and Alcibiades have agreed is necessary for self-knowledge. Just as the eye, in attempting to see itself, must look at itself in another eye (133a) and at the image of its seeing reflected therein, so too, the soul, if it is to know itself, “must surely look at a soul, and especially at that region of it in which occurs the virtue of a soul— wisdom, and at any other part of a soul which resembles this” (133b). 1 The uncanny image of a self-seeing eye, gazing at its reflection in the pupil opposite it, and thus gazing at the topos in which its virtue, sight, occurs (133b), is meant to set in more concrete form the means by which a soul could come to know itself. If Socrates's comparison is to be maintained, soul must be able to understand itself in an “other,” thereby catching glimpses of its wisdom. Whether this “other” of the soul is the soul of another, whose workings are grasped in the actions, passions, and thoughts of which it is the source, or the soul sufficiently alienated from itself in order to encounter itself, 2 it nevertheless stands that the task of self-knowledge requires the soul to become an object for itself. Exactly how it is to do so remains undetermined in this dialogue, but we are presented with a compelling portrait of soul attempting to see itself in its portrayal of Socrates's seduction of Alcibiades, a seduction which, for all its talk of eyes, takes place in words, that medium through which (as Socrates himself points out) their souls have been interacting (13od). 3
This image of self-knowledge contains two strains of thought whose persistence in the investigations of soul undertaken throughout Plato's dialogues proves useful for anyone wanting to measure the philosophical status of psychology in Plato's work: first, self-knowledge hinges upon soul's capacity to be estranged from itself; second, soul's access to itself is mediated by logos, whether that be the logos that emerges between souls or the silent logos with oneself that is, elsewhere in the dialogues, indicative of thought ( Theaet . 190a; Soph . 263d–e). Insofar as self-knowledge requires a logos of the psuchē, 4 psuchē-logy is inextricably tied to the philosophic project Socrates bequeathed to his followers and Plato took up and interpreted.
This is certainly borne out by the frequency and prominence of Plato's discussions of soul throughout the dialogues. It is equally the case, however, that Plato's thoughts on the best way to go about conducting this psuchē-logy remain deeply mysterious. The subtlety Plato exhibits in describing psychological phenomena is haunted by the conspicuous absence of any direct or simple account of how such descriptions come about. Indeed, how to gain knowledge of soul, that is, to see soul in another, is as much a question for Plato as what soul is. When, in the Gorgias , Socrates observes that only when the soul is stripped of its adornment (that is, separated from the body) and judged by a soul also separated from its body, will the judge be able to contemplate the soul of each person with his own soul (523e), he offers a particularly succinct formulation of a leitmotif of the Platonic corpus. Throughout the dialogues, unmediated access to the soul is denied to human beings; soul is treated as naming the very enigma by which humans are constituted. To inquire into soul is thus to encounter the limits of human knowledge.
This is all to say that any study of Plato's accounts of soul will have to grapple with the strangeness of the two terms by which it is comprised— and —and with the inadequacy of the word “psychology” to describe them, given its contemporary connotations of systematicity and comprehensiveness. 5 The coherence of Plato's investigations of soul is the subject of much debate. 6 Indeed, perhaps the strongest critic of his psychological investigations is Plato himself, who emphasizes throughout the dialogues the difficulty of giving a of and the tentative and qualified nature of his own accounts. 7 While lengthy and serious considerations of what soul is, what it does, and what is done to it appear throughout the dialogues, these investigations rarely occur without some qualification as to their precision. 8 This is particularly true of Plato's most elaborate descriptions of soul. 9
Thus, the student of Plato's “psychology,” like the student of his “metaphysics” or his “ethics,” is faced w